What is going on in the Tory leadership contest? On Tuesday evening, it looked as though James Cleverly was on the up. Following an impressive outing at Conservative party conference, the former foreign secretary had become the bookies’ favourite and in Tuesday’s knockout round secured the highest number of MP backers at 39 votes. However, in a move that has led to shock in the Tory party, he has just been knocked out of the race. In the final knock-out round of the contest, Cleverly only managed 37 votes to Kemi Badenoch on 42 votes and Robert Jenrick on 41.
It’s worth noting that the vote is anonymous
It means that Jenrick and Badenoch will be the two candidates to go to the membership vote. This is in some ways unsurprising: when the contest was first called, it was viewed to be a two horse race between them. However, since party conference it had increasingly looked as though Badenoch could be pushed out and prevented from reaching the final two.
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